Gil didn’t worry, did not think. Instead he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as he mentally counted cadence and held his destination in mind.

The road trended roughly southwest, then abruptly cut back in a southeast direction. More than once Gil found himself back tracking to the road, having lost it where another, older road cut through the newer one, the one he was following back to town.

The evening was cool and pleasant, it was the night and early morning hours that were hard to bare as the cloudless skies failed to hold the daytime heat. Gil when from sweating to shivering within hours, still he kept his pace.

Eventually his shadow rejoined him on his right as the moon and the stars gave way to the sun and the coming warmth of morning. Gil knew that soon he’d have to hunt shade and then he could have a bite of canned pears and some water.

Mid-morning, about ten, Gil guessed, it was becoming hot and he decided it was time to find cover. All he could see for some distance was low-lying scrub and creosote bushes.

Because he knew that the roots of the creosote plant poisoned nearby plants as a survival measure guaranteeing the creosote would get the what water came for the sky or ground, Gil decided to select a bush and drape his canvas over it and use it as a form of shade. He’d have to move with the sun, and into the shade to avoid it’s affect.

It wasn’t the most effective technique, because it didn’t allow for a solid period of sleep, but it would keep Gil cooler, than if he laid down with no cover. For the next few hours, he nodded on and off, ate another pear and drank some water, conserving his energy as much as possible.

Soon, the sun was lingering in the west and Gil’s shadow had drifted to his left. Shortly after dark the road angled back towards the west, a sign that told him he was walking in the right direction.

It was the last major shift in the road, though the ruts remained a constant presence, made harder to navigate by a moonless night. The darkness was vast and discomforting due to the stranger noises it offered.

From time to time, he thought he heard the soft foot-fall of a coyote or two as they skirted the brush, keeping an eye on the lone man. To warn them off, and to make himself feel better, Gil whistled a Scottish lullaby he’d learned as a child.

It always made him think of home, a place he’d not seen in a year and a half. As he walked, whistled and listen, he thought of his folks and imagined them comfortably asleep in their bed.

The chill of the night was coming and he discovered another use for the piece of canvas he’d brought along for the journey. Using his pen-knife, Gil slit a space wide enough to fit his head through and after taking his rucksack off, pulled it over his head like a poncho, pulling the rucksack on after.

It wasn’t as warm as a down-filled jacket, but it did cut the cold enough to allow Gil to not feel it’s sting as badly as the night and morning hours before. As he pressed on, Gil continued to count his steps and hold tight to the vision of the town somewhere in the far distance.

Lost in reverie, Gil failed to notice the large drop in the rut ahead as he marched on. Suddenly, he felt himself toppling over and down a rocky embankment, having stumbled into the tire-deep chasm.

The end of the month came and went, and no Smith. Gil wasn’t concerned as he still had supplies enough to last another week to ten-days if need be.

Instead of wandering about though, he decided to stay close by, if the old man suddenly showed up. To while away his time, Gil sat on the porch or inside the shadow of the doorway reading.

Ten days had passed, and as he finished up the alternative history, “Aristopia: A Roman History of the New World,” written by a fellow named Castello Holford in 1895, a book Gil found dissatisfying, he understood he was not going to be able to wait any longer. He was going have to walk out of the desert and 80 miles to civilization.

He spent that night tidying up the shack and packing what necessities he felt he would need. Gil also filled two large lidded jars with water and stowed them in his rucksack for the journey ahead.

That night and for much of the next day, Gil slept. He planned to make the hike in the cooler hours of evening, nighttime and early morning, seeking shelter from the blaze of the late morning and afternoon sun. He had found a large piece of faded canvas to use as a make-shift tent if he were unable to find a bush or rock to find shade in.

Before shouldering his sack, Gil scrambled up the rocky slope to where he’d seen Blue Stone break the ridge. He stood looking out over a semi-flat expanse of sage, creosote and sand, but no where did he see the old Indian.

Even with more rest than normal, Gil felt exhausted simply thinking about the long hike. He’d walked lengthy distances before, especially in the Army, but never across such unforgiving land and for so many deadly miles.

Sighing, he picked the rucksack up, slipped his arms through the straps, and turning his back on the mine and what civilization it offered, started down the yellow-white, rutted road of hard packed sand. Gil figured that it would take him at least three days to finally reach the paved roadway.

After three months, Gil had established a pattern for himself. He chopped wood and gathered water in the hours just after sunrise, then he spent the rest of his day, exploring his surrounding, including walking back to where he’d followed the horses.

The last time Smith had brought around supplies, Gil hadn’t been there. He had left his boss a note saying he was off looking around and that he’d be back for sundown.

When he returned, the supplies were neatly stacked up on the porch, but Smith was gone. Again the thought of why the old prospector turned city-folk continued to hang on to the claim, found it’s way into Gil’s mind.

“Perhaps, it’s the nature of the man.” He spent the rest of the evening putting away supplies and tidying up the place.

Come the following morning, after completing his chores, he decided to search around to see if he could find a certain sized wire. Gil planned to finally see if he could make a fish-hook, so he could do some fishing.

After combing through a nearby pile of scraps, Gil felt he had a perfect piece of wire to be manipulated into a hook. Through the morning he carefully, shaped and crafted the length of wire into a barb, sharpening it on a stone.

He’d already been hard at work on fashioning pieces of reed into fishing-line following the step-by-step instructions he’d found in one of the older magazines. With around thirty feet of line, a solid hook, an old cork he’d discovered under the counter and some fresh meat, Gil headed to what he’d come to call, ‘Mustang Hole,’ the next morning.

With long shadows falling behind him, Gil stood along the bank of the reservoir testing his skill against some rather large trout. He could see their huge, shiny bodies as they approached the surface, but none had bothered to test his bait.

One hour, two hours and three, with nothing to show for his effort. By then the sun was up and it had grown hot and with no shade nearby, Gil knew he had to return to the mine or risk heat-stroke as the temperature reached the point of unbearable.

Sighing in defeat, he drew his line in, wrapping the hand-made thread around a stick he’d found. That’s when he heard a laugh come from behind him.

Turning he saw Jack squatting some distance away. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough to be entertained and amused.”

“Well, they’re jus’ not biting today.”

“Don’t have to bite.” He stood up and approached the area near where Gil had been standing.

From a pouch he had tucked in his waist band, Jack withdrew what looked to be finely ground leaves and he spread it across the top of the still water. “‘Totsimatasukwi’ in my tongue. No idea what you call it.”

Suddenly, and if by magic, several large fish floated to the surface. Though amazed, Gil quickly pulled them on shore.

“You get one. I take others. My totsimatasukwi.”

“No complaint from me.”

In silence the two men walked back towards the mine where Jack broke the quietude, “My real name is Sago Ti-bi-chi, not ‘One-eyed’ Jack.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Father named me. Said I was blue and still — like a stone when born.”

“Does that mean you’re White name would something like ‘Blue Stone?’”

“Perhaps. Better than ‘One-eyed’ Jack.’”

“Well, you do only have one eye.”

“Young boy threw rock. Knocked out eye.”

“When did that happen?”

“I can not remember how old.”

“Any idea how old you are now?”

“No. Long forgotten. Old, though.” Blue Stone laughed.

Once back at the mine, Blue Stone continued without a word up the steep grade and out of sight. Gil went to work cleaning his trout, grilling it in the large cast-iron frying pan on the stove.

It was the first time in over a year, Gil had fish for dinner. And he savored every morsel of it.

Three days after Smith’s hit-and-run visit, Gil was sweeping out the dust that had accumulated on the floor in the last 24-hours, when a shadow crossed the uneven wooden planks. It was ‘One-eyed’ Jack.

The old man stood there watching as the younger man swept the floor. “You won’t find me doing women’s work like that, beside my floor is dirt.”

Gil looked up and saw Jack smiling at his comment. “Come in, coffee’s on and I’m about to burn some beef in the pan.”

“No thank you, come to trade for eggs.” Joe held up a large rattlesnake that he’d already skinned.

The sight was less than appetizing to Gil and he tried not to show it as he quickly turned to retrieve the brown chicken eggs. “How many?”

“Two.”

“Sure you won’t stay for some coffee?”

“No. Maybe one day soon.”

Gil handed the two eggs to the Indian and watched as he deftly scaled the trail over the berm and onto the hillside, then down to where his claim must me situated. He then turned his attention to the snake that Joe had left setting on the porch.

Not only was it skinned, but he had boned it as well. “Maybe a little flour, some salt and pepper and I might be able to stomach it.”

Gil poured himself a cup of coffee, grabbed Eugene O’Neill’s four act play ‘Gold,’ written in 1923, and headed outside to enjoy the coolness of the morning air. The book with it’s brittle spine and rough, cracked binding about a sea-captain who thinks that a bangle he has found on a Pacific Island is of gold, encrusted with precious gems, although it is obvious to others that it is only two-penny trash, fit Gil’s mood perfectly.

There had been times in the last 72-hours where he’d begin to wonder what it was that caused Smith to cling to this particular mine. From what he’d seen, there wasn’t much in the way of color, nor had the shaft seen work to any extent in the last few years.

The thought lingered, drifting in and out of his mind until he had to ‘put it away,’ as his father said. He decided that the next time Smith arrived, he’d have a letter ready to mail to let his folks know that he was okay and doing fine.

Gil was the oldest of three children; a sister, who was a year younger than him and a brother three years his junior. Each were out in the world making their way as any good child, grown to adulthood, should be doing.

He was doing the same, just not in the traditional sense as he disregarded returning to school after having done poorly as a child-student. Nor did he simply want to work the rest of his life on the farm, preferring instead to travel around the country taking various jobs here, picking up work there.

“Besides, I’m doing alright.” Yet there was a sense of longer for his distant family – a longing he had to also ‘put away,’ as the prolong thought would serve to do nothing more than drag him down into a sadness.

With the door shaved and reshaped so that it closed smoothly and perfectly, and the window sill refitted in the wall, there was very little for Gil to do, other than roam the hillside, the desert and to chop wood. And if he were honest with himself, he preferred knocking about the wilds, not staying close to the cabin and mine.

Soon, he found himself hiking further and further from the encampment. He found wild horse tracks, wild because they showed no sign of horseshoes in their prints, and followed them for nearly four miles.

Eventually they lead him to a smallish body of water that the Mustangs would visit. Upstream was a hot springs, while further south the water was cool, and drinkable.

“If I can figure out how to catch me some fish, that would be great.”

As he walked back, he saw a figure in the far distance. It was Jack.

Gil quickened his pace hoping catch the old man. Unfortunately for Gil, the younger man walked into a slight dip in the earth and by the time he came up on the other side, the old Indian had vanished.

It was the first time Gil had felt the pang of loneliness. He pressed on, arriving back at the shack before sunset.

That evening he had a visitor – Jack came walking down the hillside. “I take that cup of coffee, now.”

Smiling, Gil quickly got a second cup and filled it to the Indian. They sat in silence, watching the stars and drinking their coffee.

“You are a different White man,” Jack offered.

“Yeah? How’s that?

“I saw you today on the flats and I know you saw me. Most White man would have shouted. Not you. You stayed quiet. Make’s you different.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“More good than bad.” With that the old man set his cup down and headed back up the hillside into the darkness.

There was no sound. Occasionally, during the day, a magpie might cry out or a loosened rock rattle down the hillside, otherwise nothing – not even the sound of a high-flying aircraft that seemed so common in Death Valley.

At night, Gil was certain he’d heard someone prowling about. It would take nearly two-weeks before Gil would see the lone figure wandering along a trail higher above the camp – an old man in a well-worn leather beaded vest, a floppy, lifeless looking sombrero, leggings made from strips of faded OD-green canvas and rather large six-shooter hanging from his bony frame.

He’d been warned to stay clear of the old Indian because of his unending suspicion of others living or visiting the high desert. However, Gil, being curious didn’t think there could be much harm in finding the old man’s trail and seeing where it led too.

Night after night, he watched the ghost-like figure wander east along the upper ridge, then return a few hours later, heading back the way he’d came. Gil had found the rocky path the Indian traveled, though he could find no foot prints to support the fact that indeed the old man had ever walked that way.

He was scouting the ground, looking for any trace of a foot-fall, when he heard a subtle sound from behind. Startled, Gil turned to see the very ancient looking Indian walking up the ridge towards him.

Gil noted the gun tied to the man’s hip as he approached. He stepped back off the path and allowed the Indian to pass.

He felt for his pistol on his hip as he watched the old fellow continue up the trail without a word. Gil studied the man as he passed, seeing he had only one good eye, the other being an empty socket – thus the name ‘One-eyed’ Jack.

Gil would see the man a half-dozen times before the two spoke a word, then it was One-eyed Jack who asked, “You seen an old goat go by?”

“No,” Gil answered.

“She’ll be back, I guess. She’s old, forgets like me.”

The next time they met was the same day that old man Smith returned as promised. With him he brought more supplies, including some dried beef, canned beans, more canned pears and coffee beans, something the mine-site had been lacking.

The old Indian saw the dust kicked up by the truck first and quickly but quietly slipped over the ridge top out of sight. It would be another three days before Gil would see the man walking the path above the mine again.

Smith got out of the truck and pulled the tailgate down. “You gettin’ on okay by yerself? Was afraid you might have lit out too. Pleasant surprise to see yer still around.”

Gil tried not to let the comment get to him. He might have been a tramp, but he was also a man of his word and when he shook hands on something, he aimed to see the thing through.

Rankled by Smith’s comments, he unloaded and halt the supplies in to the shack while Smith refilled the trucks’ radiator. Gil noticed that in one of the boxes were a number of Reader Digest paperbacks, newer in date than some of the magazines still resting on the shelf in the back of the hovel.

With the radiator filled again, Smith grinned at Gil, “Looks like yer doin’ fine. See you in 30 days.”

Smith wasted no time in firing up the truck and returning to the rutted roadway. This time Gil didn’t stand around watching as the vehicle disappeared – he wanted to go through the supplies, putting stuff away and seeing what else might be in them as a surprise.

Gil looked at his pocket watch; ten before one in the afternoon. The trip took near six-hours to make and old man Smith seemed in a hurry to get back to Carson. “This here’s a diesel generator. Key to the gate is inside the cabins door post. It powers all the light, those in the shaft and the one’s around the site, but I ‘spect you’ll be needin’ it, ‘less somethin’ goes bad out here.”

“Try not to shoot anyone, course, if they try shootin’ you, do whatcha gotta do to stay alive,” he added. “And if yer any good with yer hand, you might pound a few more nails in that door frame and the window sill too. A bit warped after time. I’ll be out to see you around the first.”

Gil grabbed his rucksack out of the back of the truck and stood watching as the old man and his old truck bounced and squeaked heading back in the direction they’d had just come. He thought about the day’s journey, the many turns and bends in the road, the number of cross trails and the springs that dotted the way back.

Thirty-days; it would be a long time to not know another human’s voice, but Gil had been alone before. His last job was for Fractured Bob Johnson in Death Valley where Gil had spent a month doing assessment work and where he had the company of a couple of dogs, three goats and a mule.

Here, he had none of that. And since the day was still young, Gil decided to do some simple exploring. He had made a mental note of the encampment’s set up as they’d rolled into the site.

The mine entrance was in the center of a horseshoe-shaped rise with the gate to the compound to the right of the shaft. From the porch of the shack, that would be Gil’s home through the summer, he could see the straight-away of the road as it approached the gate.

It disappeared in a hard left some fifty-feet from the claims opening. But by that time, it would be obvious that a vehicle was approaching and therefore Gil knew the shack’s positioning was instrumental in keeping the site safe from the vandals, or ‘hooligans,’ as Smith called them.

Finding a thin footpath above the mine’s shaft, Gil walked up to have a look at what might be on the other side of the 30-foot berm. It was exactly as expected, dry, dusty and flat to the west.

He walked across the top of the horse-shaped sill towards the east. At the mid-point the earthworks connected to a natural-made, larger and much higher hillside and farther to the east and south, more open, wind-blown land covered in creosote bushes and other scrub.

Having seen enough of what lay outside the ridge that held the mine, Gil returned to the cabin to see what it might hold. Along it’s side was a rough stack pile of dried wood, some already chopped, some still needing bucking, “I’ll find the saw later,” he reminded himself.

He also found the water source for the area, a narrow iron pipe that jutted out of the hillside from behind the wood pile. It dripped slowly into a rocky basin that appeared to be visited by several animal’s including quail, mice, snakes and a coyote or two.

Inside the cabin, he learned that the majority of the living space was roughed out of the hillside, with just the front part being a wood frame. Smith was right about the door, warped it was difficult to open and close properly and would need to be one of the first things Gil would need to take care of come the following day.

With the door still open, he explored the depth of the cave that served as the majority of the shack. He found several half-burned candles. two lanterns and four glass chimney lamps, which he moved to the front of the abode.

Lighting one of the lanterns, he returned to the back of the chamber, where he located an old wooden bed frame with a flat board in the place where a mattress would usually be, and a shelf filled with ancient looking books and newer, though a few decades old, magazines that had obviously been left behind by past occupants.

“It’ll be good to have something to read again.”

Back at the front, Gil checked on the cast-iron stove that shared the wall with a counter. It seemed to be in good working condition, save for the possibility of a bird or a rodent having made a home of the pipe that rose up from behind the antique ‘smoke-belcher.’

Under the counter, he located cans upon cans of food supplies; mostly beans and peach and pear-halves, but no can opener. “No problem, I can use my pen-knife unless I trip over it someplace along the way.”

Gil spent the next few hours straightening and rearranging his living-space before retrieving a rather large piece of already bucked tree to prop up against one of the two post that held the roof up over the porch. There he would sit, watching that day’s sun fade, while eating half-warm beans directly from the can with the only utensil he could find, a bent spoon, followed by a can of pears, also half-warm.

Completely shot, the leaf-springs in the old pick-up majorly squeaked every time the old man drove over a rock in the road or struck a hole in the middle of the ruts left by years of worn travel back and forth from the mine. He drove without a care as he explained what Gilroy’s duties were for the next four-months in the Nevada desert.

Tired of hitching rides, Gil, as he like to be called, longed to settle down for the summer and perhaps winter if he could find a job that would last that long. The last several hundred miles as seen some change from the hot dustiness of Death Valley to the cooler climate of Sierra Mountains.

From the back of a truck hauling chickens to Reno, Gil had watched and enjoyed the change in the land he was seeing. He decided that Carson City was as far as he’d go after nearly an entire day’s travel breathing in the less-than-delicate odors of chicken feathers and droppings.

Before he pulled away, the truck’s driver told Gil of a possible job. “You jus’ head up the street there and you’ll see a stone wall. That’s old man Smith’s and he’s lookin’ for some help out at one of his mines.”

“Some 80 miles out in the middle of nowhere,” Smith stated. “You sure you can handed bein’ alone? Last feller didn’t even last two weeks. Up and walked away, leaving’ everything behind, includin’ what I owed him for his time.”

Gil nodded, acknowledging that he was listening, knowing the old man wasn’t really looking for answer. As he did so, he also studied the terrain, what road they turn of off and on the dirt track they were following, the flatness of the hard, white playa and the mountains that still seemed impossibly distant but towards they sped.

“It’s jus’ a few hundred yard’s outside the boundary of the Walker Rez. So don’t be surprised if you see an injun or two wandering about the hills. Mostly harmless, save for One-eyed Jack. He thinks everyone’s out to jump his claim and he’s always got a hog-leg on’em,” Smith continued.

He suddenly slowed to make a sharp bend in the roadway, barely avoiding a large rock that jutted up from the sun-baked and cracked earth. “Easy to go around, than to move,” Gil thought.

A few minutes more, Smith slowed the truck to a stop and without a word got out. He pulled a large half-rusted tin with a heavy piece of twine tied through a hole in it, from the bed of the truck and walked out into the desert.

Gil was quick to follow. Hidden between clumps of creosote bushed and smallish sand dunes, was a hot springs, that Smith proceeded to dip the can into.

Still hot he set it on the ground beside himself and pointed, “Don’t go trying to get a drink or bathe from one of these hell-holes, son. They’ll boil yer meat right off yer bones in a minute.”

He picked the cooling tin up out of the sand, by the thick string tied too it, and headed back across the desert, through the scrub to the waiting truck. After a few more minutes and after having consumed a ‘roll-yer-own,’ Smith popped the cap off the radiator and emptied the tin’s content into the belching chasm of the trucks’ belly.

Less than a minute later, they were back in the truck bouncing farther and farther from civilization. And Gil was wishing the trip was over.

For an older manuscript, ‘Aristopia’ is a quick read, if not a frustrating one for anybody who loves history.  Written in 1895 by Castello N. Holford, the book is only about 240-pages in length and 35 short chapters in total.

Billed as an ‘Utopian novel,’ it’s considered to be the first novel-length, alternate history ever written about the founding of America. The story-line however reverses the normal Utopian ideal by instead of imagining a better society at a future time or in a far-off place, Holford creates a fictionalized founding of the United States.

In the end, for me, it wasn’t so much a Utopian story as it is a fanciful tale that couches the ideals of Socialism in such a way that it becomes appealing to the general masses. Further evidence of this can be found in the final few pages; advertisements for other books of fiction about social and economic change and finally, reformation, which would eventually become the cornerstone of Teddy Roosevelt’s 1901 presidential platform, “The Square Deal.”

Each ad comes with a side note like: “A story of the Struggles of Honest Industry under Present Day Condition” and “A powerfully Dramatic Novel, dealing with the Struggles of the Poor in City and Country.”  Historically speaking, when ‘Aristopia’, was first published, the U.S. was beginning its transformation from a Constitutional Republic to the democratic nation of today.

‘Arena Publishing Company,’ the publisher that put ‘Aristopia,’ on book shelves is known to have specialized in fiction and non-fiction books on Progressive causes of the era. Though in existence from 1890 to 1896, Arena had been known by other book-mongers as “the notoriously radical Arena Publishing Company.”

Lastly, I’m working on a new ‘chapter’ story that I hope to have finished soon, with the first installment being published tomorrow. I am trying figure out how I can have the main character interact with this book, which he finds a Nevada mining camp where he’s employed as a caretaker.

It’s such a strange thing to wake up thinking about, especially after 23 years, today. This early morning thought goes back to the day after Dad died in July 1995.

My step-mom, Jere’ and I had a lot of things to do that day in preparation for my father, her husband’s funeral. Before we headed out for the day, we sat out on the porch of their condo and drank coffee from a matching set of blue plastic Thermos coffee mugs.

As I sat there, I recall thinking, “Did Dad drink from one of these cups while sitting out here with Jere’?”

As I clear out old notes,  I’ve found one I’d written October 19, 2009 after reading the following paragraph in the New York Times:

“‘People who use marijuana for medical purposes and those who distribute it to them should not face federal prosecution, provided they act according to state law, the Justice Department said Monday in a directive with far-reaching political and legal implications.’

The Democratic parties planning is far greater, more advanced and long-term than most people can or even want to believe. The push to legalize cannabis has very little to do with over-regulation, state or personal rights or even medical care and everything to do with the Second Amendment.

In fact, both the legalization of marijuana and the right ‘to keep and bear arms,’ might be ushered in under all three area’s mentioned above. In the end, it will cross the threshold under state vs. federal law, with state rights winning out.

The sudden rush to destroy our current healthcare system is at the heart of this planning. By making healthcare unaffordable, more and more people will be seeking ways to self-medicate themselves to relieve their physical and emotional pain and discomfort.

Once healthcare is permanently crippled, more people will turn to ‘medical marijuana dispensaries,’ where the applicant, customer, patient must fill-out paperwork, thus registering as a marijuana user. Once their name is in ‘the system,’ it can be used to cross reference for anything, including gun purchases and applications for carry-concealed permits.

Not only can the state come in and separate a registered marijuana user from their firearms, this information can also be transmitted to the federal government for use. All it takes is one state enacting such a law, and soon others will follow, until the confiscation of guns and other weapons is happening in all 50 states.

There are those who say that ‘gun laws’ and ‘marijuana laws’ are separate issues. These are same people who claim that ‘state law’ and ‘federal law’ are separate issues, but unfortunately, the two often cross the line into the others domain.

In the end it must be remembered that an unarmed citizenry is exactly the kind of citizenry ripe for “fundamental transformation.”

Well, let’s time-hop to 2018 and the Nevada Department of Public and Behavioral Health’s website which has this to say, “The Medical Marijuana dispensaries of the State of Nevada are authorized to sell medical marijuana to card holders from the states above if the patient presents a State or local government-issued medical marijuana card.”

Then there’s the fact that in 2011 a Las Vegas medical marijuana patient challenged the law when a gun store refused to sell her a firearm, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2016 ruled that a federal government ban of gun sales to state-legal medical marijuana patients does not violate the Second Amendment. This has set-up a legal battle that’s more than likely heading for the supreme Court of the U.S.

President Trump recently indicated he’d support a congressional effort giving states autonomy over their marijuana laws. This comes on the heels of a bill introduced by Senators Republican Cory Gardner of Colorado, and Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat,  that would protect states that have legalized marijuana from federal interference.