Only 55 percent of staff at cannabis dispensaries receive formal training, according to a new report.

However, 94 percent of staff reported giving dosage advice to patients. 

The peer-reviewed study comes at a pivotal time as legalization of cannabis for medical use increases across the U.S.

Twenty-eight states and Washington, D.C., have laws that permit medical marijuana.

It's a sight typically seen in Royal Canadian Legion halls — veterans gathered and sharing stories. But instead, that was the scene at the opening ceremony for a new wellness centre in Headingley, Man. this weekend, which focuses on helping vets get medical marijuana.

The province's first Marijuana for Trauma centre opened on Saturday morning, the 13th such centre the company has opened in Canada.

The centre, located west of the Perimeter Highway at 4280 Portage Ave., helps veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions get access to marijuana for medicinal purposes.

"Marijuana for Trauma grew from an absolute need, a true need," said Riley McGee, the western Canada director of operations for the company.

Medical marijuana…a hot topic for quite some time. Some people say they’re against the cannabis industry for many reasons, including the stigma of dispensaries and others try to shed a positive light on the growing business.

That’s exactly what the medical marijuana business conference here in Lansing aimed to do today.

“See that it’s normal, see that it’s not scary and become part of the new cannabis economy,” said Medical Marijuana Conference Host Rick Thompson.

In just over two weeks, three new laws will go into effect in Michigan to regulate medical marijuana. Because of that, the conference served as an educational space for aspiring medical marijuana entrepreneurs.

State regulators on Friday tried to calm the troubled Oregon marijuana industry, revising testing rules that had stifled the market and thrown businesses into jeopardy, but the move was met with doubt by industry players.

The Oregon Health Authority called the revisions, which took effect immediately, “temporary rules aimed at lowering the testing burden on producers and processors based on concerns and input from the marijuana industry.”

A consultant to marijuana businesses, however, said the revisions fell far short of what the troubled industry was hoping to see.

On a typical day, Daphnée Elisma will fire up her vaporizer and inhale roughly three grams of marijuana.

She can go through a quarter-pound of weed a month, spending about $500 in the process. 

But Elisma, 41, isn’t what you might call a burnout.

She’s in her third year of law school at Université de Sherbrooke. Like more than 40,000 Canadians, Elisma is licensed to use medical marijuana. She says the drug helps manage her chronic pain and makes it possible for her to keep up with the demanding schedule of a full-time law student.

Elisma describes the pain in vivid terms.

MedMen likens itself, as many cannabis companies do, to an early tech startup. Its West Hollywood dispensary looks a bit like an Apple store, with samples of product in polished glass cases and information about each on iPads. In a grow facility in Sun Valley, north of Los Angeles, marijuana plants grow in coconut fiber, sustained by drip irrigation and marked by thin plastic labels stuck in soil. Beyond the dispensary and cultivation center, the company offers "turnkey management services" to others in the cannabis space and boasts a $100 million venture capital fund.

This is the future of legal marijuana in California: Diversification, slick branding and professional investment.

In Colorado, recreational marijuana has been legal since 2012, but it’s still forbidden by many employers.

That apparent conflict means lab owner Kelly Kirwan sees people regularly attempting to rig their drug tests. Some try to use someone else’s urine (requiring them to reheat it for authenticity; sparking the microwave rule at the nearby convenience store), while others try to mix in powders they buy via Internet in the hope of masking pot-positive results.

On October 30, 2016, it became legal to grow cannabis in Australia—for medicinal purposes only, of course. But becoming a grower won't be as simple as walking into a doctor's office complaining of "night blindness" or dropping a couple of marijuana seeds into the planter box on your balcony.

Unlike the US, Australia has taken a very top down approach to medical marijuana—legalising at the federal level first, and then letting the states add their own regulations as they go. In many ways, it could make for a neater system, one focused on critically ill patients and medical research. But it's also likely to be a lot more bureaucratic.

Californians are expected to pass a ballot measure on Election Day legalizing recreational marijuana, and the prospect has cities and counties seeing dollar signs.

Proposition 64 would impose state taxes on the cultivation and sale of marijuana. But it also allows local jurisdictions to add taxes of their own, something many cities and counties said they plan to do.

Economists warn that burdensome taxes and fees on the nascent industry could backfire, fueling the black market and pushing marijuana businesses to decamp for towns where it’s cheaper to operate. For many city and county officials across California, however, the promise of new revenue to fill budget gaps and fund services is too alluring to pass up.