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From California, with its counterculture heritage, to the fishing ports and mill towns of Maine, millions of Americans in nine states have a chance to vote Nov. 8 on expanding legal access to marijuana. Collectively, the ballot measures amount to the closest the U.S. has come to a national referendum on the drug. (Elias and Crary, 9/28)

The California Nurses Association, which last year offered an unusually early endorsement for Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2018 gubernatorial bid, on Tuesday announced support for Newsom’s high-stakes fall initiative to legalize recreational marijuana. ... The formal endorsement puts the nurses on the side of the California Medical Association and at odds with the California Hospital Association, which opposes the Proposition 64 legalization proposal on the Nov. 8 ballot. Proposition 64 was proposed by Donald Lyman, a retired physician and former member of the California Medical Association who in 2011 wrote a white paper for the 40,000-member organization calling for the legalization of marijuana and declaring the federal ban on the drug “a failed public health policy.” (Cadelago, 9/27)

If pot laws were colors, a map of the U.S. map would resemble a tie-dye T-shirt. In some states, marijuana is illegal. In others, it’s legal for medical purposes. And still in others, it is even legal for recreational use. Five more states could come into that last category this fall, as voters decide whether to legalize it in California, Nevada, Maine, Massachusetts and Arizona. (Foden-Vencil and Sieg, 9/28)