HARRISBURG — A state senator said Friday he used marijuana during a recent taxpayer-funded trip to Colorado to observe the state's legal marijuana industry in action.

Sen. Daylin Leach, a leading proponent of legalized marijuana in the Legislature, said he took two hits from a vape pen, similar to an e-cigarette, at his hotel. The device vaporizes a form of marijuana and is smokeless. Leach said it was a gift from a facility he and aides toured during the trip, which cost nearly $5,000.

Leach, D-Montgomery, said that on his last night in Colorado he wanted to use the drug for the first time in about 25 years because people have told him potency is greater than it used to be.

“I did two hits, which was less than I would have done when I was in high school,” Leach said. “I definitely felt the effects of it.”

A bill co-sponsored by Leach that would allow medical marijuana passed a state Senate committee with a unanimous vote in late June.

Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican former prosecutor, has said his support for legalized marijuana extends only to the use of an extract to treat severe seizures in children.

STATE COLLEGE — The director of Penn State's renowned Blue Band is retiring.O. Richard Bundy says the upcoming football season will be his last. He says he'll remain in charge through the end of the 2014-15 academic year.Bundy confirmed his retirement after Penn State posted a job listing for a new director of athletic bands starting in July 2015.The 66-year-old Bundy played in the band as an undergraduate and joined the faculty in 1983. He became band director in 1996.The band was awarded the Sudler Trophy as one of the nation's top marching bands in 2005.Bundy says in retirement he'll be traveling, playing trombone and rooting for the Blue Band's students and staff as they continue to “raise the song.”

PITTSBURGH — An iconic sign atop Pittsburgh's Mount Washington won't have the Bayer name in lights much longer.The chemical and pharmaceutical giant said that it no longer wants to pay for the 30-foot-tall advertisement and asked sign owner Lamar to turn it off as quickly as possible.The Bayer name has been in lights on the sign since 1995 and the company has long complained that the 90-year-old sign is in need of lighting upgrades and repairs.The Germany-based Bayer has about 2,200 employees in suburban Pittsburgh where it houses the North American headquarters of its material sciences business.

WASHINGTON — A judge must now decide whether to toss out evidence in the trial of a former judge accused of stealing cocaine from evidence files.A suppression hearing wrapped up in the case of former Washington County judge Paul Pozonsky, who is accused of taking the drugs and replacing some of them with baking soda before he was removed from hearing criminal cases early in 2012.The defense contends that a president judge's order to search Pozonsky's chambers was “illegal, invalid and unconstitutional.” Attorney Robert Del Greco said state police and the attorney general's office did not have probable cause for a search warrant, and he calls the order an attempt to “circumvent the Fourth Amendment.”Pozonsky, 58, wasn't present at Thursday's hearing. He is charged with conflict of interest, theft, obstruction of justice, possession of a controlled substance and misapplying entrusted government property.

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — An Army Reserve center in Kentucky will be renamed in honor of an officer from Pennsylvania who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq.The 81st Regional Support Command will honor U.S. Army Maj. Michael L. Mundell during a ceremony Sunday at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.Mundell, who was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in Canonsburg, was killed in 2007 in Fallujah. He was serving with the 108th Division, a training unit of 4,500 soldiers that is headquartered in North Carolina.