Altria Group Inc., one of the world's biggest tobacco companies, is diving into the cannabis market with a $2.4 billion buy-in.

Lawmakers in Utah passed sweeping changes Monday to a voter-approved medical marijuana ballot measure under a planned compromise that secured the support of the influential Mormon Church but sparked a backlash from pot advocates.

The Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy pulled up to the pot-filled warehouse just after three in the morning.

Following its successful (and still running) pop-up space inside the Pottery dispensary in L.A.’s Mid-City, purveyor of luxury-level cannabis accoutrements Higher Standards has announced plans to take up temporary residence inside the Cannary West dispensary in the Rancho Park neighborhood just in time for the holidays.

On track to pop-up on Saturday (with a 20% opening day discount) and run through the end of February, it’ll serve up a similar curated mix of high-end smoking tools and accessories from brands like Marley Naturals, Grav Labs, Dr. Dabber and Puffco (makers of the futuristic-looking Peak dab rig) as well as home goods for the discerning head by Jonathan Adler, Malin+Goetz and Forestry Wool.

Higher Standards X Cannary West

On Easter Sunday 2007, Pastor John Lee Bishop drew about 15,000 worshipers to a sports arena in Portland, Ore.

The recent parade of permit applications from marijuana manufacturing and distribution businesses looking to open in Costa Mesa will continue next week, when the city Planning Commission is scheduled to review four more.

The employee in the red shirt counseled the two men on what — or what not — to buy.

He described marijuana as a “very real danger” and has said its effects are “only slightly less awful” than those of heroin. Once, during a drug hearing when he was a Senator, he said he wanted to send a clear message: “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

Don’t expect to find bongs, water pipes and empty packets of Funyuns at the Los Angeles-area home of Will Htun.

Two marijuana stores in Massachusetts have been given the green light to begin selling to recreational customers, making them the first commercial pot shops in the eastern United States.