The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has clarified its differing opinions on medical marijuana legislation.

The LDS Church specified its concerns in a statement last week, saying the measures take very different approaches to access, distribution and control of the hallucinogenic compound THC.

Saratoga Springs Republican Sen. Mark Madsen sponsored a bill that allows patients with a doctor's recommendation to access products containing THC. He said in early February that the church owed an explanation to the people for its differing views.

A bill sponsored by Cedar City Republican Sen. Evan Vickers and Orem Republican Rep. Brad Daw legalizes products containing marijuana plant extracts containing almost no THC.

CHARLOTTE, NC (Steve Harrison/The Charlotte Observer) -

During a traffic stop on Freedom Drive in late 2014, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer found $10 worth of marijuana in Morchello Pearce’s car.

Under N.C. law, the officer had a choice: Give Pearce a citation for possession of less than a half ounce of marijuana or arrest him. The officer arrested Pearce, who is black.

“It was just a little bud,” said Pearce, who works as a chef at an uptown restaurant and bar. “I know the law, and I told him, ‘You could write me a ticket.’ I think he felt like doing that because I was on the wrong side of town.”

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — One of two proposals this year to expand Utah's medical marijuana law sets up tight controls around a cannabis extract some conservative legislators may see as a safer option than a broader medical pot program.

Utah already allows the extract, called cannabidiol, to be used by those with severe epilepsy, as long as they obtain the product from other states.

A judge has handed down a reduced sentence to a cannabis grower in the U.K. after sympathizing with his predicament.

20-year-old Joshua Hughes made a bosh job at his first attempt to grow cannabis indoors in order to maintain his 20-a-day joint habit.

His defense lawyer pleaded his case by calling him “dim witted” for flooding his flat which led to his arrest. The judge agreed with the defense and called the defendant “incompetent” in maintaining a grow, and gave him a suspended sentence.

Metro reports:

The other Bangor Daily News blog that writes about marijuana, Cannabis Today, published an article bemoaning “simplistic rhetoric.” In her article, Wellness Connection’s Becky DeKeuster takes issue with Representative Deborah Sanderson’s reference to the potential Wal-Martization of the marijuana industry in Maine. Wellness Connection, which runs half of Maine’s dispensaries, takes issue with that label. More power to them, because I do agree that taking a complex issue, or a complex side of an issue, and boiling it down into simple rhetoric and pejoratives is quite unhelpful. I do think, however, it is time for some in the legalization movement to practice what DeKeuster is preaching, and stop boiling down the broad opposition to marijuana legalization into simplistic rhetoric.

Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump is hedging his position on marijuana legalization, but is “a hundred percent” in favor of medical marijuana. Nonetheless, Trump’s stated position on legalization is evolving, because he has acknowledged that “in some ways” legalization “is good.”

Trump, speaking to Bill O’Reilly on Fox News this week, was asked about his position on marijuana legalization in Colorado. After expressing some concern over the health effects of marijuana, he was pressed by O’Reilly about what he would do to stop it. Trump then confessed that “I would, I would really want to think about that one Bill because in some ways, I think it’s good and in other ways, it’s bad.”

Trade unionist Helen Kelly says she's frustrated the Ministry of Health has turned down her application to use medical cannabis.

CANNABIS growing has reached epidemic proportions, a crown court judge has said.

Judge Geraint Walters was speaking in the case of a man who came under pressure over a £2,000 drugs debt and agreed to grow cannabis plants at his home so that he could pay it off.

But police discovered them after a female made an abandoned call from the property in Wrexham.

Officers went to check, could smell cannabis from outside and saw condensation on the windows. Inside they found a grow tent in a bedroom with plants.

Cannabis was in the process of being harvested, explained prosecutor Emmalyne Downing.

Dominic Marsh,of Pont Wen, Caia Park, admitted cannabis production last October but avoided immediate custody.

Portions of Toledo’s newly enacted marijuana decriminalization law are “unconstitutional and unenforceable,” a Lucas County judge said Friday.

At the request of the county prosecutor, county sheriff, and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, Lucas County Common Pleas Judge Dean Mandros granted a preliminary injunction preventing the city from enforcing the parts of the “Sensible Marihuana Ordinance” that he agreed were contrary to state law.

With the Republican U.S. presidential candidates getting ready to take the stage at yet another debate Saturday evening, they should be preparing to discuss an issue of high importance: marijuana legalization. Billionaire businessman Donald Trump, the front-runner in the GOP opinion polls, addressed the matter when he appeared on the Fox News Channel show “The O’Reilly Factor” Wednesday.

Trump was asked whether he was concerned about people buying cannabis in Colorado, where marijuana is legal, and then reselling it outside the state, where it may or may not be legal. He replied that this situation presented a problem, but he also discussed the drug’s benefits when employed for medicinal purposes.