Gene Johnson Posts

Washington became the second state Tuesday to allow people to buy marijuana legally in the U.S. without a doctor's note as customers eager to be the first to buy pot lined up outside stores. People began purchasing marijuana at 8 a.m. at Bellingham's Top Shelf Cannabis, one of two stores in the city north of Seattle that started selling pot as soon as it was allowed under state regulations. Several dozen people waited outside before the store opened.

As Washington plows toward the legalization of pot, it's finding that getting the cannabis market off the ground has been even tougher than anyone imagined. Among the frustrated are growers who have been waiting months for permission to start raising their bar-coded plants; advocates who wish more public health messaging had been done by now; and would-be pot vendors who say bad luck, minor oversights on their applications, or errors by state officials have torpedoed otherwise promising efforts.

The Army staff sergeant charged with slaughtering 16 villagers during one of the worst atrocities of the Afghanistan war has agreed to plead guilty in a deal to avoid the death penalty, his attorney told The Associated Press on Wednesday.