Author: News Room

It’s December, the month film critics share what they think are the best films they’ve watched this year. A quick scan of outlets like Variety, Indiewire, Roger Ebert.com, and Film Comment reveals a couple of common picks ranging from the popular and therefore obvious – Oppenheimer, Poor Things, Barbie, Asteroid City, Killers of the Flower Moon – to the truly independent and under the radar – like Pawo Choyning Dorji’s The Monk and the Gun. The Bhutanese filmmaker had received praise for his last film, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, about a yak in a classroom. Monk and the…

Parents have a lot to worry about when it comes to their kids. I wouldn’t know because I only own a dog, but I hear it isn’t easy. Social media, school safety, mental health, tech overuse, and diets are all top parent concerns as we head into 2024. For some families, weed is another critical issue. The worry is particularly pressing for new parents, those who don’t consume, or those who are just getting back into weed themselves.  The concerns are warranted when considering cities like New York City and states like California struggle with unlicensed shops, many of whom…

Tonight I promised myself I would slide down to the local Mexican joint and “Wolf Down” some serious Tacos. I love Mexican food. My Grandmother lived in San Antonio all of her life. She lived in harmony and respect with her Mexican neighbors, and learned to cook their cuisine. She would fix these huge Mexican dinners every Friday night, and I was her “Number One Grandson,” so I got DeLuxe Chow-Down. But now that she is no longer with us, I am resigned to finding a commercial establishment to satisfy my cravings. The story begins in the usual Chef RA…

New York’s governor has vetoed legislation that would have allowed licensed marijuana growers to sell products to tribal retailers. The bills, sponsored by Sen. Michelle Hinchey (D) and Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo (D), who respectively chair the state Senate and Assembly agriculture committees, would have given a release valve to hundreds of cannabis farmers who have been sitting on surpluses without any place to sell their products. “We offered a way for some of the oversupply of cannabis grown by NY’s farmers to be sold to NY’s Tribal Nations,” Hinchey and Lupardo said in a statement reacting to the veto. “Given…

JoJo Valente, a.k.a. The JoJoSnaps, has found her place in cannabis through photography, using her craft to share the many stories and characters throughout the cannabis industry and broader community. The first inklings of her Puff Portraits series began in 2020, and since then, she’s captured some of the most notable people in the culture. JoJoSnaps (Self portrait) Pot Meets Portraits Now based in Huntington Beach, California, Valente fell in love with photography during her freshman year of high school. After securing a marketing degree from California State University, Chico and a photography degree from Orange Coast College, she traveled…

“We identified important progress being made, but it’s clear there is still much work to be done.” By Ben Botkin, Oregon Capital Chronicle Measure 110 has helped the growth of treatment and recovery services for drug addiction, but the state can do more to better manage the program, according to a report released Wednesday by the Oregon secretary of state’s office. Lawmakers mandated the financial review, which looks at services that were established starting in 2022, two years after voters passed Measure 110, decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs and putting a share of cannabis revenue into treatment and…

President Joe Biden’s newly expanded marijuana pardon proclamation is getting praise from top officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris, with supporters cheering the clemency action as another step in the right direction. The president announced the latest mass pardon—which covers people who’ve committed federal cannabis possession offenses, and also provides relief for the first time to those who’ve possessed marijuana on federal properties—on Friday. This comes about a year after Biden issued an initial mass cannabis pardon and directed an administrative review into marijuana scheduling. While some advocates have been critical of the limited reform, imploring Biden to vocally support…

President Joe Biden has officially signed a large-scale defense bill that contains provisions to fund clinical trials into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics for active duty military service members. The president signed the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law on Friday, about a week after Congress approved the final deal and sent it to his desk. Advocates were encouraged to see that bicameral negotiators agreed to maintain the psychedelics research provisions championed by Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-TX) that were attached to the House version over the summer. However, House negotiators receded on a separate section to create a…

More than a dozen bipartisan House and Senate lawmakers are pushing the Biden administration to “redouble” its efforts to secure the release of an American imprisoned in Russia over medical marijuana, saying he “must” be included in any future prisoner swaps. In a letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday, 15 members of the Pennsylvania congressional delegation said that Marc Fogel is serving an “unconscionable 14-year sentence” in Russia after being convicted for possessing a “limited amount of medical marijuana” that he used to treat chronic pain as a registered patient in Pennsylvania. “Throughout this process, Mr.…

The governor of Ohio is pushing lawmakers to take action as soon as possible to address the “ridiculous situation” the state has found itself in, where marijuana is now legal to possess and use but without any place for consumers to purchase regulated products from. Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said that the Senate passed a “good bill” to make various changes to the legalization law that voters approved at the ballot last month, but the House didn’t act before lawmakers adjourned for the year. He said he’s spoken with House Speaker Jason Stephens (R), who assured him that the chamber…