Marijuana

When the federal Department of Health and Human Services recently issued a request for proposals, seeking competitive applications for the production, analysis and distribution of "marijuana cigarettes," the request might have seemed a bit unusual to those unfamiliar with Washington's dance around cannabis research. The federal government, after all, is not widely known to support marijuana cultivation. But those in the know just shrugged. The department has issued similar requests every few years to select a contractor to conduct government-approved marijuana research, and with depressing regularity it has then awarded an exclusive contract to the University of Mississippi.

Narcotics agents said Tuesday they had little doubt that the nearly 90,000-acre La Brea fire was started by Mexican drug traffickers who were tending a large, sophisticated marijuana farm planted on the side of a mountain. The growers apparently fled as firefighters approached the source of the fire and are still at large, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said. Their abandoned site was similar to other illicit plots planted by Mexican nationals and discovered by drug agents in recent years.

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.

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 Nebraska man who stuffed his girlfriend's kitten into a makeshift bong and filled it with marijuana smoke says that he had done it before and that it had calmed the kitten down. Acea Schomaker, 20, of Lincoln said Tuesday that he never intended to hurt the kitten, 6-month-old Shadow. He says the kitten would bite and scratch him and his girlfriend but he didn't want to discipline it by swatting it or squirting it with water.

Rotting marijuana that Michael Jackson's family members mistook for heroin briefly caused detectives to look for further evidence of the illegal drug in the pop star's rented residence during the frenzied 48 hours after his death, according to sources close to the investigation. Family members told coroner's officials that they found "tar heroin" in the Holmby Hills home's master bedroom. Only Jackson and his children had access to the room, according to court records unsealed Thursday.

Citing "overwhelming" evidence that marijuana eases pain and anxiety for the chronically ill, medicinal pot advocates told a federal appeals panel Tuesday that the federal government should be stopped from spreading "false information" about marijuana. As was argued in the debate over whether stem cell research should be resumed, Americans for Safe Access cast the Bush administration's opposition to any legalized use of marijuana as being shaped by conservative sentiments instead of hard facts.

By all appearances, Rebecca Kuzelka used her home to operate a child day-care business on a quiet, tree-lined street in Lake Elsinore. But a different picture of the 55-year-old mother emerged after her home was rocked by an explosion late Wednesday night. On Thursday morning, deputies arrested Kuzelka and her son Grey Kuzelka, 21, on suspicion of using their home to make bombs and grow marijuana. Another son, Benjamin Kuzelka, 23, injured his hand in the explosion and was hospitalized.

One of the three victims of the San Francisco Zoo tiger attack was intoxicated and admitted standing atop a railing of the big-cat enclosure and yelling and waving at the animal that would later maul them, killing his friend, police said in court documents filed Thursday. Paul Dhaliwal, 19, told the father of Carlos Sousa Jr.

First they noticed a spike in home-based marijuana growing operations. Seattle-area authorities shuttered 450 indoor pot farms in two years. Then they zeroed in on the supply chain, targeting businesses that provide goods and services needed to grow the illegal weed indoors. Then they went after a mortgage loan company they say financed houses in which the plants were grown.