Marijuana

YANJI, China - After the North Korean coal mine where she worked stopped paying salaries, Park Kyung Ok tried her hand at business. Buttons and zippers, candy and dried squid, fabric, plastic tarpaulins, men's suits and cigarettes. "I sold just about everything," said Park, 44. But it wasn't until she started hawking methamphetamine in 2007, she said, that she was able to earn a living. Methamphetamine, known as orum, or "ice," is a rare commodity manufactured and sold in North Korea, where most factories sit idle, the equipment rusted or looted.

SAN DIEGO - One person is dead and another was wounded after an attempted armed robbery at a medical marijuana dispensary in the North Park neighborhood, police said Friday. The shooting occurred around 12:30 p.m. Two suspects left in a Mercedes-Benz. Initial reports say a security guard shot and killed one robber but was wounded. He was taken to a local trauma center.   ALSO: Drought covers 100% of California for first time in 15 years Sword-swinging man shot by officers in South L.A., police say School bus driver may not have hit brakes before crash, CHP says   Twitter: @LATsandiego tony.perry@latimes.com

Santa Clara county authorities are on the lookout for a pot farmer who recycles. Workers at a San Jose recycling center found a large trash bag filled with marijuana plants last week. San Jose police say the plants could have come from anywhere in Santa Clara County. Because marijuana cultivation is illegal under federal law, the plants are evidence and won't be sent to a composting bin, authorities say.

Several Colorado fourth-graders face disciplinary action for bringing their grandparents' legally purchased pot to school and apparently selling it to a few classmates, according to school officials. The pupils, three 10-year-old boys and a 10-year-old girl at Monfort Elementary School in Greeley, took the pot to school Monday for resale on campus, officials said. The marijuana appears to have been legally purchased by adults -- grandparents in two families -- and no charges were expected to be filed, John Gates, director of safety for Weld County School District 6, told reporters, according to the Associated Press.

A medical malpractice lawsuit filed by the family of an Orange County girl who was revived after doctors allegedly declared her dead went to trial Monday. Mackayla Jespersen was 20 months old when she fell into a swimming pool at her Fullerton home on Nov. 7, 2003. The lawsuit alleges that the girl, now 6, suffered permanent brain damage after doctors at Anaheim Memorial Medical Center wrongly pronounced her dead and disconnected her breathing tube. More than an hour later, a police detective conducting a routine investigation noticed that her chest was moving and summoned doctors, who were able to revive the child.

A government test has determined that a red dye used in many lipsticks is a powerful herbicide capable of killing marijuana plants, prompting some Bush Administration officials to propose using the dye in an airborne offensive against domestic marijuana cultivation.

For seven years, Scott Stokes conducted his own reckless inquiries into the physiological effects of pot. "I woke up to get high, and I got high to go to bed," recalled the 19-year-old from El Toro, who broke his marijuana habit only after he was arrested two years ago for burglarizing a head shop. "If I didn't have it, I would . . . start sweating, and when I'd breathe deep I'd get into these weird breathing patterns. "People say that marijuana is not addictive, but it's extremely addictive."

WASHINGTON - The tidy Takoma Wellness Center, one of the first medical marijuana dispensaries to open in the nation's capital, has a quaint reception area furnished with black leather chairs, plants and artwork. On the front desk are a pile of business cards and a sign-in sheet. In the back, shelves are stocked with the latest marijuana accessories: pipes, cookbooks, even a machine that mixes the drug into butter or oil for cooking. All that's missing are more patients. Since opening this summer, the three Washington, D.C.-based marijuana dispensaries have served a total of 111 patients in a district with about 600,000 residents.

As a drug, marijuana has certain effects and, depending on why you're taking it, some side effects. And not everyone wants the whole package. New research finds that for patients who consider weed's buzz an unwanted side effect, the answer might be as simple as taking an ibuprofen with their tetrahydrocannibinol (or THC). A study published Thursday in the journal Cell both demonstrates and explains why common anti-inflammatory drugs, including ibuprofen and the prescription analgesics indomethacin and celecoxib (marketed as Celebrex)

Go figure! The voters in our state have spoken and now we want to ban cigarettes and legalize marijuana. Only in California. JOE WERTZBERGER Yorba Linda

Two former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies have been charged with planting guns at a medical marijuana dispensary to arrest two men, one of whom prosecutors said was sentenced to a year in jail before the bad evidence was discovered. Julio Cesar Martinez, 39, and Anthony Manuel Paez, 32, face two felony counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice and altering evidence, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office announced Wednesday. Martinez was charged with two additional felony counts of perjury and one count of filing a false report.

Over a five-year period, a government-mandated tracking system in France showed that physicians in that country treated 1,979 patients for serious health problems associated with the use of marijuana, and nearly 2% of those encounters were with patients suffering from cardiovascular problems, including heart attack, cardiac arrhythmia and stroke, and circulation problems in the arms and legs. In roughly a quarter of those cases, the study found, the patient died. In the United States, when young and otherwise healthy patients show up in emergency departments with symptoms of heart attack, stroke, cardiomyopathy and cardiac arrhythmia, physicians have frequently noted in case reports that these unusual patients are regular marijuana users.

SACRAMENTO -- Medical marijuana dispensaries in California would have to get state Public Health Department licenses, and doctors who recommend pot would face new standards for examining patients under legislation supported Monday by a state Senate panel. The measure, supported by members of the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee, also clarifies the authority of cities and counties to prohibit pot shops within their borders. Sen. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana)

Like St. Patrick's Day in Boston or New Year's Eve in New York City, April 20 seems to have a found an epicenter in Denver. The annual global celebration of marijuana drew tens of thousands of people this weekend to festivals in Denver, the capital of the first U.S. state to make the drug available for recreational use to anyone 21 and older. The annual celebration has fallen on April 20, or 4/20, because a group of rebellious California teenagers in the 1970s supposedly decided to meet up at 4:20 p.m. each day after school to smoke marijuana.

Maybe Jerry Brown was more right about marijuana than folks gave him credit for -- at least if a new study on pot has merit. You may recall that California's governor, appearing on NBC's “Meet the Press” in March, had this to say about marijuana legalization : “How many people can get stoned and still have a great state or a great nation? The world's pretty dangerous, very competitive. I think we need to stay alert, if not 24 hours a day, more than some of the potheads might be able to put together.” Plenty of folks disagree with that view, of course (hey, the '60s die hard!

Three men accused of trying to smuggle roughly two tons of marijuana onto the beaches of Malibu in a panga-style boat were charged Tuesday in federal court. Carlos Millan-Rogel, Jesus Aaron Guevara-Moreno and Victor Ayala-Marin face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison if convicted, according to the U.S. attorney's office. A 20-page affidavit filed with the complaint says the three men were caught by authorities Monday morning on the sand at Leo Carrillo State Park in Malibu where the boat was found washed up on the sand, leaking gas and smelling strongly of marijuana.

Re "Reefer madness at the DEA," Editorial, Jan. 25 You state that whether to reclassify marijuana under federal law to permit its prescription as a medicine should be based on science and an evaluation of the facts rather than myths. I agree. Yet your editorial is based on myth, asserting that the Drug Enforcement Administration has made it nearly impossible for researchers to obtain marijuana for such studies. To the contrary, not a single scientifically valid study by a qualified researcher has ever been denied by the DEA or, for that matter, by the National Institute of Drug Abuse.

Three men are in custody on suspicion of attempting to smuggle drugs into the country after authorities found their panga-style boat washed ashore Monday in Malibu and loaded with as much as a ton of marijuana, authorities said . The men, whose identities haven't been released, could make their first court appearances Tuesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lori Haley wrote in an email Monday. Leo Carrillo State Park rangers found the 30-foot boat about 8 a.m. on a portion of the shore in unincorporated Malibu.

A panga-style boat loaded with as much as a ton of marijuana was seized after it washed ashore at Leo Carrillo State Beach in Malibu early Monday, authorities said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers said they located the 30-foot boat around 8 a.m. near a clump of jagged rocks. In a CBS Los Angeles video , officials can be seen standing around the boat with bundles of what apparently is marijuana piled onboard. One person has been detained but authorities did not release further details about the suspect or the boat.