A regulated medical cannabis industry needs to evolve to provide users with accurate biochemical information on all cannabis-containing products.

Final judgement On 6 April 2016, the Third Division of the Federal Administrative Court reached a landmark decision which is of crucial importance to cannabis patients: it issued a permit to a 52-year-old MS patient to grow cannabis at home. More on the legally binding decision and the background to the approval of cannabis cultivation here.

I have just watched the closing plenary session of the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session on the world drug problem here in New York. Presidents and Prime Ministers will now move on to the climate change summit that opens tomorrow, and the thousands of government and NGO delegates who have filled the UN building in Manhattan over the last 3 days will catch their flights back to all corners of the globe. So was it worth it – three years of preparation, tens of millions of dollars of travel and meeting costs, and countless hours of debate and negotiation. Is the international community any better placed to reduce the health, social and economic problems associated with illicit drug markets?

There has been some controversy over the idea that cannabis can either make you a good or bad parent. With more and more parent marijuana smokers on the rise in the United States, is it possible that cannabis make you a better parent?

Today, about 10 % of the United States adult population are regular marijuana smokers. This is almost double the amount of marijuana smokers that were on record in the early 2000’s. This means that the people who are smoking the most marijuana in this country are among ages that are normal for having children, 25 to 30 years old.

Early results indicate trial participants saw a 40 percent decrease in frequency and severity of seizures.

Pharmaceutical-grade cannabis already is providing some with severe epilepsy relief less than two years after clinical trials began in Utah.

The University of Utah's Division of Pediatric Neurology and Primary Children's Medical Center began in September 2014 the first of three separate clinical trials involving Epidiolex, a liquid, purified form of cannabidiol (CBD), which is a nonpsychoactive chemical in marijuana.

Early results indicate trial participants have seen about a 40 percent decrease in the frequency and severity of seizures, said neurologist Francis Filloux, an author on the study.

Cannabis researchers in the United States are forced to conduct their studies using weed grown by the federal government. And many of them have said that Uncle Sam isn’t giving them what they need. If a scientist in the U.S. wants to do an official study of cannabis the only way to legally get the weed they need is to get it from the federal government’s supply.

Since 1968 the U.S. government has contracted with the University of Mississippi to grow for cannabis researchers.

The Montana Supreme Court Monday delayed until Aug. 31 the effective date of medical-marijuana restrictions that it declared constitutional in February.

A majority of the court agreed with marijuana industry claims that imposing the restrictions immediately would cause “serious disruption” to a program that’s been operating now for almost five years under less-restrictive rules.

But the court rejected a request by the industry – and the Bullock administration – to delay the restrictions until 2017, to give the next Legislature a chance to modify them.

After a successful pilot program, the A.C.T. Now program will soon offer treatment for Californians with serious illnesses. Learn what it all means.

Harborside Health Center, the multi-state cannabis super-brand with claim to the largest dispensary in California, has cemented a partnership with United Cannabis Corporation to bring revolutionary and effective new cannabis therapies to thousands of patients in California. 

Two years ago, Florida voters rejected a push to legalize medical marijuana. Well, they did and they didn’t. A sizeable majority of voters — 58 percent — agreed to legalize. But back in 2006, the state changed the rules on constitutional amendments, increasing the percentage required for passage from a simple majority to 60 percent. By failing to reach that supermajority, 2014’s medical marijuana amendment failed. 

A Georgia mom is helping to lead the charge to expand the state's limited medical marijuana law, which she says unfairly excludes many patients with severe medical conditions — including her 5-year-old autistic daughter — who could benefit from the plant's medicinal properties.

"There are some pretty tenacious parents who are fighting," said Jennifer Conforti, whose daughter, Abby, isn't covered by the current law. "... Why wouldn't you do that as a legislator? What is in it for you to make you not want to help families in the state?"

Second of two parts