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Colorado and Washington officials are hammering out details for how their states' recreational marijuana markets will work. Both states legalized the drug for recreational use.

(The Associated Press)

Here's a quick look at marijuana-related news around the country.

We start our morning roundup in Colorado, where The Denver Post announced the appointment of a marijuana editor. Ricardo Baca, the paper's longtime music critic, will oversee the newspaper's wide-ranging coverage of marijuana legalization. Colorado, like Washington, legalized marijuana for recreational use last year.

In a Q&A with his own newspaper, Baca says he wants the paper's coverage to tackle all aspects of marijuana, its culture, politics and implications for the state.

Says Baca:

People are totally ready for this, and we've only briefly talked about it on social media. Of course the pitches are already coming, which is great. But I've also heard from a number of freelancers interested in contributing to our coverage. Of course there are those out there who think we're starting some party site, and there are even others who disagree with Colorado voters and weed legalization in general. But while our site will be a mix of news and entertainment and features and columns and reviews, we will have voices in the mix from all sides of the story.

The legalization of pot in Washington and Colorado have given the cannabis community legitimacy, growing influence and a foundation for legalization elsewhere, writes Miranda Green in The Atlantic.

By engaging in political-money games, endorsing candidates, confederating cannabis-related businesses, and old-fashioned lobbying, the pot movement is working to expand the playing field to more states and confront the federal government's long-standing and entrenched opposition to marijuana infrastructure head on. Campaigners hope to make legalization the sort of social issue candidates have to take a stand on, just as gay marriage and abortion before it became crucial litmus tests.

Former politicians and other well-connected figures are joining with medical marijuana dispensary applicants in Massachusetts, The Boston Globe reports. A new law allows the creation of 35 new nonprofit outlets, creating a highly competitive market for those hoping for state approval.

Despite the name, nonprofits can be highly lucrative for those involved.

"It's an absolute gold rush,'' said John Scheft, the attorney who represented the opponents to the 2012 voter-approved law that created the system. "You are an idiot if you are running a dispensary and you can't make a couple of million dollars in profit."

Interviews with several of the participants and a Globe review of preliminary applications indicate some of the political figures who have joined the Massachusetts marijuana market are investors in the firms while others say they are simply consultants.

And speaking of Massachusetts, activists are pushing for full legalization of marijuana, according to this AP report.

The group Bay State Repeal says it's planning to put the proposal on the state's 2016 ballot.

The group is first planning to test different versions of the measure by placing nonbinding referendum questions on next year's ballot in about a dozen state representative districts.

Those nonbinding questions are intended to gauge voter support for possible variations of the final, binding question.

And one more good read before you go: NBC has this profile of Ethan Nadelmann, described as "the world's roving prime minister of pot."

For Nadelmann, a former Princeton professor who doesn't use marijuana, legalizing pot is just the beginning of drug policy reforms he'd like to see.

"I'm always telling my marijuana reform allies, when they say we need to legalize marijuana and get tougher on the other drugs, 'shut the hell up,'" he said, returning to form as the Princeton professor he was before turning to drug policy two decades ago. "We don't need to end one discrimination and prohibition to double down on another."

"It's absolutely pivotal," he continued, "for building a broader movement for freedom and justice that we treat this thing as of-a-piece."

The whole, of course, is safe and legal access to all drugs. Cocaine. Heroin. Hash. Ecstasy. You name it, Nadelmann wants people to have the right to get it, hold it, use it and even pass it in small quantities. The only country that comes close to such a program is Portugal, which in 2001 decriminalized the getting, having, and taking of a 10-day supply of any drug.

-- Noelle Crombie