marijuana

Nearly nine out of 10 cases where vaping led to people developing a severe lung disease in Wisconsin involved the use of THC products, such as waxes or oils, Wisconsin's Department of Health Services said Thursday.

Health officials said that 89% of the 27 people they interviewed who became sick reported using e-cigarettes or other vaping devices to inhale THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana.

In late December 2017, Lisa Kum received a call from her husband, Sothy.

Sothy told Lisa to pick him up in Chicago because he was about to be released after three months of detention by immigration authorities on a marijuana-related charge. On the drive from Wisconsin with their daughter Emma, she received another call: Sothy said there was a mistake, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement was not going to release him.

During Wisconsin’s 2018 midterm election, which saw a record-breaking turnout, it was not the close gubernatorial race that motivated Milwaukee resident Marlon Rockett to cast an early ballot. It was the county’s non-binding referendum on whether recreational use of marijuana should be legalized.

In a tiny room inside a hair salon in Viroqua, Wis., two women gaze over a glass case. They have driven 30-some miles down the Mississippi River from La Crosse just to check out Kickapoo Kind, a shop established last summer in the heart of the state’s politically liberal Driftless region.

On a Saturday morning, customers flow in and out of the shop, where a neon CBD sign glows in the window and a fan spreads the smell of cannabis as soon as you walk in the door.

Matthew Abel’s law firm bank account was shut down twice. He had to temporarily change the name of his Detroit firm from Cannabis Counsel to the generic Rivertown, PLC.

John Sinclair, a “radical poet” and national symbol of marijuana injustice, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1969 after passing two joints to an undercover narcotics officer.

Elected as state representative for the 48th Assembly District, Rep. Melissa Sargent, D-Madison, has been “legislating through listening” to her 60,000 constituents since 2012. The stories and concerns she heard from voters in her district have launched Sargent on an unexpected journey, sending her on a mission that she never ant­icipated when she first ran for office.

Sargent, who says she has never used marijuana, has concluded that prohibition of the drug is ruining the lives of a large number of Wisconsin residents.