Passengers in the state of California will soon be banned from smoking cannabis in any moving vehicle, although drinking alcohol is still A-OK.

Although passengers in standard moving vehicles like cars, trucks and vans were already prohibited from toking at the wheel, there were exceptions for vehicles like taxis, limos, campers, residential vehicles, pedicabs and party buses.

But now legislators have opted to put an end to the exemption for passengers of the aforementioned vehicles, despite its legal status in the state having rendered it a popular party drug for Californians.

Would you be willing to pony up for pot potency?

Analysts in California’s beleaguered cannabis industry have proposed making consumers do just that by getting rid of the state’s bizarre patchwork tax system and replacing it with one tied to the strength of the strain.

Made by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, the proposal would wipe out the current taxation system, including a 15 percent levy that all consumers pay at the counter, and replace it with a tiered system.

After having avoided an increase in state taxes on legal marijuana, California officials changed course Thursday and announced MJ excise and cultivation taxes will go up effective Jan. 1.

High state and local tax rates have been an industry problem that have made legal businesses less competitive with the illicit market: Unlicensed retailers can lure customers with lower prices, since rogue shops don’t pay any taxes.

By the time the sun came up on Friday the thirteenth, cannabis law enforcement agents had seized $8.8 million worth of cannabis products, including some 10,000 counterfeit vape pens and $129,000 cash, from two dozen unlicensed cannabis shops in Los Angeles, California. From December 10 – 12, investigators with the state’s Bureau of Cannabis Control and the Department of Consumer Affairs’ Cannabis Enforcement Unit served search warrants at dozens of cannabis retailers, rounding up and arresting staff and confiscating products and cash.

The week-long mass raids represent the largest crackdown on the illicit cannabis industry in Los Angeles. And chief cannabis regulators vow there’s more to come.

A California panel voted on Wednesday to require warning labels for cannabis products sold legally in the state.

California’s Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee made the decision after concluding that marijuana smoke and its active ingredient, THC, are harmful to pregnant women and the development of the fetus, says Tracy Woodruff, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the committee.

“We reviewed probably several hundred studies,” Woodruff says of the committee’s research. “We were focused on the effects of exposure to cannabinoid smoke and THC on development, so development of the fetus.”

Growing up, San Francisco’s first Black dispensary owner Shawn Richard sold marijuana on the streets of the Haight Ashbury neighborhood. He was far from the first person to do so. The Haight gave birth to the 1960s hippie movement and cannabis has long been a cornerstone of the area’s culture.

But now, on December 21, Richard will open the doors of Berner on Haight, the neighborhood’s very first legal marijuana dispensary.

More than three years after California voters broadly legalized marijuana, a state panel is considering if its potent, high-inducing chemical — THC — should be declared a risk to pregnant women and require warnings.

Studies have indicated that a rising number of mothers-to-be have turned to marijuana products for relief from morning sickness and headaches, though it’s effectiveness has not been backed by science.

Would-be cannabis entrepreneurs might commit a drastic act to have Christopher Schroeder’s problems. The founder of Somatik, a San Francisco Bay Area-based cannabis startup that manufactures THC and CBD-infused coffee drinks and chocolate-covered espresso beans produced in concert with existing, well-known consumer brands, launched his company to a round of positive press. The warm reception was an object lesson that in the cannabis legalization era, there was a big market for high-end cannabis edibles. Schroeder’s stated dream — to see Somatik cold-brew coffee on tap in high-end cafes, next to the “unleaded” cold crew and the kombucha — seemed within reach.

Then legalization happened.