SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes will not be allowed in Puerto Rico, but cannabis derivatives could be consumed in other ways, government officials said Tuesday as they provided more details on the governor's weekend executive order on cannabis use.

Justice Secretary Cesar Miranda told The Associated Press that the government would allow patients access to cannabis derivatives that would be inhaled or used orally, such as potions or pills.

"Smoking marijuana is not being contemplated as part of a medical treatment," he said.

Reading, writing ... and reefer? 

A first-in-the-nation bill that would allow students to have medical marijuana in school is heading to the Colorado governor’s desk after passing the state legislature late Monday night.

The change in the law was sought to let schoolchildren in Colorado who are living with conditions like epilepsy, cerebral palsy and seizures take doses of low-THC medical marijuana. While marijuana possession and use is legal in Colorado, schools are still drug-free zones -- but bill supporters argued medical marijuana should be treated no differently than other medications. 

In an Otsego greenhouse, Minnesota’s first medical cannabis crop is in bloom.

Young marijuana plants, fuzzy and pungent, stretched toward the skylights as Dr. Kyle Kingsley threaded between the plant beds, leading state media on a tour of the Minnesota Medical Solutions facility that will supply half of Minnesota’s legal medical marijuana.

A provision of a Florida medical marijuana law has caused much controversy among black farmers in the state who say it’s shutting them out of the potentially lucrative industry. This group has now taken their fight to the Florida legislature in the hopes of passing an amendment that takes the regulation out of the bill.

"We're very, very happy that we can get started and see some improvements and get the nasty medicines behind us," Josie's mother, Stacie Mathes, said Monday afternoon.

The Matheses started giving Josie the cannabis oil as soon as they got the word the bill was signed. There's no guarantee it works, and even if it does it will take time. But the new law provides hope.

"As parents, you want some miracles. And you know in some cases it will stop seizures pretty quick," Stacie Mathes said.

"We're hopeful that we can get them under control. ... We're happy with that."

The new law allows patients who suffer from seizures or epilepsy and received a recommendation from a doctor to use cannabis oil. The law takes effect immediately.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia has released a new, updated version of their standard on Marijuana for Medical Purposes today.

The past few decades have been a small and slow beginning of what may turn out to be a large evolution of how we think about medicine and medical care in general.  Everyone has been pandered to by a family member, local stoner or even an activist on the street that has tried to convince you that cannabis can save the world somehow, cure cancer, replace your pills. Usually this person is draped in, what looks to you as, stank and ignorance to how the “real world” works.  ‘How can this young pothead know anything?’

Funny thing happened on the way the market honey… Some stoner completely changed my outlook on the world.

More than a year into Colorado's experiment legalizing marijuana, labs testing the plants are able for the first time to take stock of the drug's potency and contaminants — and openly paint a picture of what's in today's weed. At the 249^th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), one such lab presented present trends — and some surprises — that its preliminary testing has revealed about the marijuana now on the market.

After spending months in limbo, waiting for the state to hash out rules for testing medical marijuana, laboratories might be able to get to work soon. That moves patients one step closer to the first legal sales in dispensaries.

A state health official said Tuesday that all the rules are in place for labs to start testing marijuana. But in a sign of how confusing the process has been, that news came as a surprise to a dispensary owner and a lab scientist, who both expected a longer wait for the state to finalize some rules.

“It’s been incredibly frustrating,” Cindy Orser, chief science officer of DigiPath Labs, said of the wait. “We were hoping to be operational at the end of January. Or February. Or March. Or April. And now it’s May.”

× Tainted synthetic marijuana sends a dozen people to hospital in Willimantic

WILLIMANTIC – Police have issued a warning about tainted supply of K2, a synthetic marijuana that has sent a dozen users to the hospital.

Police said within the past 24 hours, they contended with nearly a dozen people who have ingested the synthetic drug which they believe was laced with another substance.